Thirty One and A Half

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The time has come for Blogger and I to part ways. I need more out of my blogging application. Specifically, I need to be able to change my template and not lose all my comments or to change my template back and not find weird text and boxes all over my archive pages. I don't know enough about CSS to design a template myself, so for the time being I'm moving over to the Mac of the blogging applications: Wordpress.

Friday, June 13, 2008

I am so thankful for my wonderful friends who find glorious online time wasters and share them with me. Today's find: The Magic MASH Machine.

For those of you who were not blessed with playing MASH in junior high (i.e. boys), it's a wonderfully silly game where you list all your crushes (plus one or two duds), all your dream jobs (plus one or two duds), all your car choices, kid choices, dream city choices, etc. and then wait for the hands of fate to determine your future. And by hands of fate, I mean, the girl that sits in front of you in Social Studies who counts out the answers and who may or may not be cheating thereby making you end up married to the class clown, Sammy Melcheck, instead of to Alan Peterson, for whom you KNOW you are truly destined.

You will marry Freddy Rodriguez. [1]After a wild honeymoon, you will settle down in Deluth in you fabulous Apartment.You will have 0 kid(s) together.Your family will zoom around in a Seafoam Green Chevy Nova.You will spend your days as an Acclaimed Air Guitar Champion, and live happily ever after.

If you are so inclined, leave your fate in the comments.

________________[1] It totally came down to either Freddy or Meatloaf. Whew!

Apologies again for the absence. I was struck down by some awful travel bug this weekend. Hubs got the allergy/cold part of it, I got everything that was (IMO) worse, including dehydration. Dehydration sucks. Drink your water, people.

But before I was felled by the uber illness, I sent two stories out to eleven markets, so at least there was something good about last week.

Also, I posted a bunch of pictures.

I know I keep saying it, but I'm sure this will be the week I get back into the swing of things.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Hubs and I are back from Alaska. It was a fabulous trip and I'll have lots to say about it once I vacation from my vacation. Blog updating will resume soon, including the monthly reading list but until then I leave you with Nyac, teh cutest otter ever:

And there we have my reading list for my travels. Not really highbrow, but it was nice to take a break from what I feel I should be reading and focus on some fun stuff.

A rave goes out to Monkey Beach, which I found in a wonderful Canadian independent bookstore. I'll definitely be looking for more of Robinson's work because this book was phenomenal. Also, I really enjoyed Melissa Senate's The Solomon Sisters Wise Up. I read See Jane Date several years ago and didn't love it so much, so I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. Both are recommended.

In other reading related news, I have to report that I visited no fewer than eight bookstores on our Alaskan adventure. Highlights included Green Apple Books in San Francisco (spent a good hour browsing there), Hearthside Books and Rainy Day Books in Juneau, and Book Warehouse in Vancouver.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

If you don't want to hear about the noir underside of publishing -- if you're a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who's happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes -- I suggest you stop reading now.

The above linked article is not a cheerful read. I've had a long rant coming on the publishing industry, the death of reading, and the stigma of self-publishing. I'll see if I can't get that up in the next week or so.